Daisy Sindelar: You grew up in Slovakia. And Slovakia, like many countries in Central Europe, has a very tumultuous 20th-century history, most of which took place before you were born. How did that history shape the life of your parents and grandparents? What kinds of stories did they tell you about life at that time? 

Tomáš Madleňák: From parts of my family, there were always these… I wouldn’t say stories, but hints about what life was like back then. Like when my mother sometimes talked about how she had to walk for miles several times a week because they owned a cow, their household. I grew up, and my mother and father also grew up, in a very rural, mountainous region of Slovakia. Pretty isolated from the rest of Czechoslovakia, basically. And she often had to walk for miles because they had a cow, and because they did not join the [communist] collectivization effort [prohibiting private ownership of agricultural assets], they were forced to pay a special tax. So basically every day they’d milk the cow, but several times a week they would have to give a share of the milk that they got from that cow to the state. The same stories were told by my grandfather, who was kind of bitter that he always had to give up a big share of his potatoes every year, every harvest. 

But having said that, the area where I grew up was always kind of isolated, very far away from the political center in Prague or Bratislava because it is in the very, very northernmost part of Slovakia, in the mountains. And these things, like these special taxes, I learned later, were basically used to crush any resistance by people in other parts of Czechoslovakia. Like if you were a person who owned even a very small field and you decided not to join the collective, they would crush you with these [special taxes] and they would force you to join. But in this part of Slovakia where I grew up, basically everybody said no. 

Do you think that geography and topography play a role in people's destiny? 

I don't completely subscribe to [journalist Tim] Marshall’s ideas about geography, determining everything. But yeah, in Slovakia, we do see this. For example, Slovaks tend to be, in general, quite xenophobic. And one of the reasons that sociologists would give you is that almost all of Slovakia is actually in some kind of mountains, and people for centuries lived in the valleys. And when you’re living in a valley and there are just forests and mountains around you, you do tend to [develop] some kind of uneasiness about people from the next valley. [People] don't really think about traveling or about visiting new places, new countries, as something good. No, they want to stay in their valley because the world outside is kind of scary.

So growing up in a rural mountainous part of Slovakia, what did the wider world look like to you as a young person? 

Being in the very northern part of Slovakia, I was basically growing up next to Poland. And we would very often go to Poland to go shopping. We would have to cross the border. There would be a long line, several hours, but then we would visit a new kind of almost exotic place for me. There were a lot of stands, a lot of people buying stuff and then we would bring it back. And my parents would tell me, this is amazing for us, because in our time when we were young, this was not possible. Like, ‘Your grandmother actually used to smuggle through the border some butter and eggs or something like this from Poland, because it was cheaper there during communism than in Slovakia.

So that was already something huge. Like, the world seemed more open. And I feel like my parents were also imprinting on me the idea that this was a moment of opportunity. Like the world is opening. 

I always dreamt about traveling. I always dreamt about visiting as many places as possible. I never actually imagined that I would stay in Slovakia. That is something that changed in me much later, this decision to come back and to work for this country. I imagined myself visiting every country in the world. That was the dream. 

First I would just go for small trips around Europe, like Italy and Croatia and stuff like that. And then I visited Asia for the first time when I was still studying. I was a student and I was doing an internship at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Slovakia. And I went to do a part of my internship in Jakarta in Indonesia. That was amazing.

I wanted to actually become a diplomat, because I imagined that would be like a dream job for me. I’d have an opportunity to not just visit, but to actually go and live somewhere for some time, every two or three years a different place and actually get paid for it. So I tried to get into diplomacy. I tried to get employed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after I finished my studies. But that was my first experience with something a little bit shady. Well, not the first, but... So I was basically accepted, and I was already on my way walking to the ministry to sign the contract when I suddenly got a call from the woman who was supposed to be my new boss. And she was really sorry but she basically informed me – she was quite open about it – that there was some kind of political pressure and that they decided they needed somebody else for this specific role. And I was quite heartbroken about that. 

So then I went and worked for a think tank for a couple of years. And it was amazing because it was a foreign policy oriented think tank. And that also allowed me through my work to go and visit a lot of countries. I've been to Bosnia, I've been to Croatia, I've been all around Europe, Norway. I've been to China because of this, you know, so that was great. So the job was great, I managed to travel a lot, but then something happened and I just couldn't continue. And that is of course the death of Ján and Martina.

So you were pursuing a career if not in diplomacy, then something that was very closely aligned with foreign policy, and that changed in February 2018. Take us through that period of time.

So this is something that I always talk about. I think it's important to know that the day, the Monday morning in February 2018 when we learned that a journalist was murdered in Slovakia, it's one of those moments in history that you just remember. You always remember where you were, what you were doing.

I was sitting in a kitchen in northern Slovakia in my parents’ house. I was working remotely. I opened my laptop and logged onto Facebook – because it was 2018 and that’s what you did – and all of my friends and basically everybody had black profile pictures and everybody was writing about Ján Kuciak, this young investigative journalist, being murdered, being shot together with his fiancee, Martina Kušnírová.  

This hit me hard. This hit me hard for several reasons. First of all, Ján was basically my age. The fact that they did not murder just him, but also Martina, who had nothing to do with that. The fact that they decided to silence a journalist, which… 

You know, we all knew that Slovakia was a corrupt country. We knew that for years. There were so many scandals. We knew that corruption was absolutely rampant and that it was absolutely rampant in the highest echelons of society.

And we also knew that law enforcement wasn’t doing anything about that. It was obvious. It was obvious that crimes were happening and nobody was doing anything about it. We knew that the police were not going to act, that the prosecutors were not going to act, and that the judges were not going to act. And absolutely not the politicians, because they were part of it. But at least we had the journalists, these people who were brave enough to at least tell us the truth. Even if it didn’t end up with anybody in jail, at least the truth was somehow sacred enough to be protected. And then they decided to kill one of those [journalists]. 

There’s a lot of violence committed against journalists on a global scale. It’s becoming an increasingly dangerous profession. Journalists are routinely arrested, harassed, killed. Their families are threatened. So the death of one journalist can unfortunately seem like a drop in the bucket. But in a small country like Slovakia, where there had been no history of violence against journalists, this must have been incredibly shocking.

There was a big history of verbal violence against journalists. It's part of this story, because – and I personally believe this is absolutely connected – verbal violence inevitably ends up as physical violence. 

Politicians – and especially Robert Fico – were increasingly aggressive towards journalists. And I personally believe that this indirectly led to this murder [of Ján Kuciak], because I believe that the person who ordered the hit wouldn’t have thought it was a good idea and something he could get away with if it wasn’t for this atmosphere of general hatred towards journalists from the people in power. 

Robert Fico, who you've mentioned, is a steady figure in Slovak politics. He’s been prime minister off and on for many years, and is currently prime minister again. 

Yes, he became the prime minister for the first time in 2006. And then except for two short breaks, he’s basically been prime minister ever since. 

So there was this [murder], and the people who support journalists, who support democracy, who support the idea that we should be a state that honors rule of law, they understood that journalism was under attack. So that's why people got really, really angry. You know, the guy was our age. He was about to get married and start a family. He owned an old house that he bought with a mortgage and [he and Martina] were trying to renovate it to make it livable. And they were shot in that old house. The girl was buried in her wedding dress because they were supposed to have their wedding in a few weeks. 

I really don't understand how somebody could have thought that it was a good idea, and that they’d get away with it. And history has shown that they didn't.

For a little bit of context, Ján was not just a journalist, he was an investigative journalist. Tell us a little bit about the type of reporting he was doing and the potential it had to anger people in high places.

In Slovakia, we used to have, and we still do have, this part of society that is basically an oligarchy. And one of these people – not the smartest, not the richest – was Marián Kočner. And Ján Kuciak, any time there was suspicion of a theft of public funds, Jano was writing about this. And Marián Kočner’s main daily bread was carousel fraud and VAT fraud and basically this kind of financial fraud. Let's just call it financial fraud. And Jano was writing about that. He was writing about that a lot. And he was really, really good. The old school investigative journalists of the ‘90s usually wrote [a story] because they had some kind of connections and sources, sometimes with people from the secret service, sometimes with people from the inside who would feed them information. And they would write about that. But Jano was not like that. Jano was one of the first investigative journalists in Slovakia who worked with data.

So, Jano was working with this data and using the data – not just, you know, human sources. He was able to show, very efficiently and with actual proof, how people like Marián Kočner were stealing money. And Marián Kočner was very successful not because he was some kind of mastermind of financial operations. His frauds were very often quite primitive. Like for example, once he showed up at court with some papers which were very, very obviously forged. But if you can imagine, the court actually ruled in his favor. So he was able to get away with really stupid fraud like this because of political connections, because of the connections he had in the police, in the prosecutor’s office, with judges in Bratislava. And he was getting really, really rich until this pesky journalist called Ján Kuciak showed up and started writing about it. And he started writing about it in such a manner that even parts of the police force and the prosecutor’s office – even though their bosses were not really happy about it – couldn’t ignore it anymore. 

The police started a criminal investigation, but the criminal investigation was then dropped. But then Ján Kuciak came and examined the case and wrote about it, and he wrote about all the reasons why the policemen and prosecutors who dropped the case were wrong. And so the higher echelons of the prosecutor's office, they couldn't ignore it anymore and they ordered a reinvestigation. And this was the first time in history when Marián Kočner was actually charged with a crime. It's ongoing until today. And according to the prosecutors and according to my own personal belief, based on years of investigative work into this case, this is why Marián Kočner decided first to have Ján Kuciak under surveillance, which was done by people who had experience from the Slovak secret service and with the Slovak police. And they were even helped by active policemen at the time. So they did the surveillance. And then the outcome of the surveillance was used for the assassination. So to basically stop this journalist from writing and from causing him to be charged in criminal cases, Kočner had Jano and Martina killed.

It changed my life completely. I just decided to go into journalism. Like to completely overhaul, change my career, accept the pay cut, doesn't matter. So I'm also working with open data. I am also mostly working on financial crime.

I think people everywhere know that corruption exists. There are low forms of corruption, like paying a cop some money to avoid getting a ticket. And then there are higher forms of corruption, where people just assume that the interaction between politics and business will naturally lead to some corruption. Many people feel powerless to do anything about it. And I want to ask you, why does corruption matter? And what can people do to fight it?

In Slovakia we have two big cities, or two bigger towns that would almost qualify to be a city, and they are Bratislava in the western part of the country and Kosice in the east. We have a project to connect those two cities with a highway. This project was started by the communists, and for a few years, they basically did a good job. A lot of kilometers were built. And then the Velvet Revolution happened, and now it's more than 30 years later and we still have not connected those two cities. 

Slovakia is not such a big country, it's not a lot of kilometers. You know, it should have been done decades ago, but we are still not able to do even this. 

Why does it matter? It's not just because of the travel time of people who are moving across the country. It's not just because of the [lost] economic opportunities and factories. The reason it matters is that this has become almost a symbol of the failure of liberal democracy for a lot of people in this country. Because they see that communists built the first part, [but] ever since we’ve had democracy, we’re just not able to [finish] it. It's the same with the education system and schools. It's the same with hospitals in Slovakia. We haven't had a new hospital opened for I don't know how many years. 

So corruption is basically eroding not just the economic potential of this country, not just taking away the health of its citizens, it's also eroding the belief that freedom and democracy even matters. If you did a survey, and there were surveys made, almost 50% [of Slovaks] would tell you that they actually think it's a good idea to have a strongman lead the country instead of having all these elections, and a new government every four years, and then nothing getting done. 

This is why so many people have such optimistic memories of socialism. Socialism was not good. But they don't remember the bad parts. The only thing they remember is that they were at least able to build the first part of that highway.

You’ve chosen to go into a profession that’s dangerous. It’s difficult. And investigative reporting is also very often a slow process. It takes a lot of determination, a lot of patience, a lot of hard work. And the end result can be quite astounding information, but it’s fed into a society that may already be looking at corruption as a fact of life and not something they can do a great deal about. So tell me about the importance of doing investigative journalism in a country like Slovakia. Why does it matter and why do you keep doing it? 

It's not easy to explain. It’s very easy for disinformers and propagandists to create different versions of the truth and to suffocate the truth. So what is my role in this society now? I believe that even in this weird version of the world that we’re living in, it’s still essential that somebody – even if it seems absolutely pointless and fruitless – will write the truth. They’ll look for it and they’ll put it out there so that if somebody – and it doesn't matter if they do it today or tomorrow or maybe in 10 years, maybe in 30 years, when they’ll be researching this [period of] time and writing their bachelor’s thesis about it – the truth will be out there. And if they do at least a little bit of work, they’ll be able to find [our reporting]. If we give up, if we say it’s not worth it, the corrupt people will just win. And this country will stop being a democracy, and nobody, even in 100 years, will be able to say what the hell actually happened here. So I basically see myself like a librarian, almost. I’m here to make sure that the information survives no matter what. 

I’m curious how much attention you’re paying to what’s going on in the United States and what your reaction is, and what the impact has been for Slovakia. 

I’m paying quite a lot of attention. I did visit several states and a lot of newsrooms in the U.S., people from the institutions. And this was before Trump got reelected. And my feeling when I got back from the U.S. was, ‘OK, you know what? This country is going to be OK.’ Like, even if Trump gets reelected, the institutions over there, they have the history. They are strong. They are resilient. There is no way somebody could just dismantle all of that like they’re doing in Hungary or in Slovakia. 

But now, looking at the U.S., I am absolutely shocked by how wrong I was. And this is the most shocking. For me, it’s not about the specific examples of Trump, you know, overstepping. It’s not about him destroying the White House and building a new ballroom, or whatever he’s doing. It’s about how effective this new regime is in essentially dismantling all of those institutions, all of those checks and balances. And also how closely and how effectively they’ve basically updated the guidebook of autocrats. 

What is happening in the U.S., in my view, is just a continuation of what is happening in Europe, in Eastern Europe mostly. You know, even in Russia, you still have elections. They are usually regular. And to a large degree, they even remain free. But you just make sure that they are not fair. And you make sure that they’re actually so unfair that there’s no doubt we’ll win. And this is a thing that in my view was created for the first time in the ‘90s and early 2000s in both Russia, but mostly some Central Asian republics, the different Stans. From there, it just spread almost like cancer from east to west towards Turkey, nowadays Israel, then Hungary. And Hungary then became a really good laboratory of this. They have perfected it. 

And you know, in every country that it jumps to, the new autocrat, he just looks at how those people before him have done it. He just takes what worked. He doesn't take what didn't work. And then in his country, it's more effective. It's better. It's more malicious, but also more effective. And so also in Slovakia, what Fico is doing is basically just copying Orban. He's just copying the exact same thing that Orban did, but for a lot of things that took Orban 10 years to do, Fico is able to do in one or two years. And you know, the disease spreads further. And in my view, it’s no coincidence that so many people around Trump, and so many people who are the actual thinkers behind what they are doing over there [in the U.S.], that they like to travel to Hungary so much and they like Hungary so much, and they have their conferences there.

It's not because they’re actual believers in some conservative vision of the world. I don't believe they have any ideology whatsoever. Actually, I think their only ideology is power and they are literally looking at what worked, what didn't work, and how they can make it better, faster, more effective. And they are just implementing that in the U S.

You also asked how this influences us. The problem for countries which are younger democracies like Slovakia is that even when we went through hardships with the quality of our own democracy, we always had a role model to look to, you know, in Western Europe and in the United States of America. Like, when we were not sure how and what to do, we could look there and we could just say, ‘OK, so this is how they are doing it. This is how we will do it. And it will work.’ The problem is that now it is reversed. And it's not reversed in order to make the democracies better, but to make autocracies better, and to make the corruption work better.

Tomáš, we always end by asking our guests a variation on the same question. You've talked a lot about corruption, and also about this reverse mechanism where the East once looked to the West for a democratic role model, but now the West seems to be looking East for an autocratic role model. What advice would you offer those Americans who are worried about attacks on their democracy right now?

Do look east. Look at our countries, because we have been screaming about this thing happening for the past 10 years. And I'm sorry to say you guys were not really listening and now you probably see where that led. Yeah, do look at the Czech Republic, at Hungary, at Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine. 

Take inspiration, because inspiration is also there. For example, in Slovakia, the protests did matter and they do matter. So don't let anybody tell you that it doesn't matter whether you show up or not. In 2018, Robert Fico's regime absolutely collapsed after the protests. We did not have a revolution. We did not burn buildings down. We were just showing up. So nonviolent, decent protests were all they were, and they were enough to take down that regime.

Also, never lose hope and don’t burn out. That is very important. These people like Fico and Trump, they are always trying to flood us with information. And I do believe to a large degree this is a tactic where they’re trying to force us to spend so much of our energy and attention on things that are not actually that important, so that once they start doing something that does actually matter and is actually extremely dangerous, we will not have enough energy to keep fighting. So I'm not saying don't watch the news. Please, do watch the news. Do continue to watch it closely. But just try not to get too invested in every small nonsense that the orange guy does, right? Wait for the moment when it really, really matters and make sure that you are not burned out and out of energy when it happens. Because it will happen. 

And then another thing I would really, really recommend is to keep talking to each other, even when it's hard, and especially when it's with your high school friends or relatives who for some reason are completely misguided and who seem like their values are just not compatible with yours. I promise you in 99% of the cases it's because you’re just watching them from a distance and through social media. Do keep talking to each other and please do it offline. But having said that, and this is my last point, even when discussing [issues] with these people, never accept that two plus two equals anything else than four. Basic facts and the truth as such are not up for debate.

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You can listen to this conversation by following Weight of the World on Spotify and Apple. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.